MOSCOW, August 18. /TASS/. Critical attitudes to the newly-registered Russian anti-coronavirus vaccine voiced by foreign scientists stem from competition, once Russia has outstripped them, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Chekhonin said on Tuesday.

"Foreign colleagues are often very critical, sometimes too critical, about the Russian vaccine because they understand that they are somewhat lagging behind," he told TASS when asked to comment on the reaction of foreign scientists to the registration of the world’s first anti-coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik V, developed by the Gamaleya National Research Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.

He said he did not think this situation would stay long. "A vaccine will soon be registered in China. I am sure it will be done within two or three weeks," he said, adding that such a vaccine would be registered in the United States by the yearend too.

"I don’t want to indulge in politics, it is not my domain. But concerning purely scientific aspects, I can say that our vaccine has been developed not from scratch. They (the Gamaleya Center - TASS) have a rather strong team of specialists. They have colossal experience, both bioengineering and gene engineering experience, the experience of developing various structures on the basis of adenoviral components. They have a vast biotechnology experience. They have their own production facility, although quite small. They have all the components a team developing a vaccine might need," he explained.

According to Chekhonin, scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences studied possibilities for the development of a two-component vaccine when research had only started and supported this idea as a state assignment. "These decisions were based on profound scientific understanding that the Gamaleya Center has a vast experience of work with the SARS and MERS coronaviruses. They have been working with them since the beginning of this century. There were no grounds to doubt that they would be able to do this job with high quality," he added.

The very fact that Russia is developing several platforms for vaccines proves that "we are strong in this area, we have our own powerful potential," he stressed.